Known CTOL and STOL carriers share a common configuration: a hangar enclosed within a hull, a large flight deck on the hangar roof, take-off runway/s, landing runway/s and pad/s on that flight deck, lifts connecting the hangar and flight decks, and a superstructure off to one side of the flight deck. CTOL carriers such as the USS Nimitz have catapults, arresters and, usually, several runways, some angled. STOL carriers such as HMS Invincible usually have a single through runway serving as take-off runway, landing runway and pad; they usually also have a ski jump because in practice they only operate STOVL and VTOL aircraft. Some 1930s carriers also had an additional take-off runway located on the hangar deck before the hangar, the rear portion of this runway being enclosed under the forward part of the main flight deck. A modern version of this type up-dated with catapults, ski jumps, arresters, etc. for use by newer aircraft and an "assembly line" system within a large hangar for fast landing, servicing and relaunching of large numbers of aircraft has been disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,325,317. Apart from the above vessels, another carrier is known, this being a STOVL vessel without a landing runway: a large container ship on which containers stacked before the superstructure form a flight deck with a take-off runway, a pad and a ski jump. A STOVL vessel is an adequate carrier because even STOL vessels in practice only deploy STOVL and VTOL aircraft. VTOL carriers are also known: some such as the French Jeanne d'Arc configured with a large hangar aft, a large pad atop it, and lifts connecting those decks; a carrier for V/STOL-as-VTOL aircraft with no pad but using a device developed by British Aerospace to release and recover hovering V/STOL-as-VTOL aircraft has also been proposed. Most VTOL vessels are not carriers but are other-role ships, usually small, configured in one of two ways: with a hangar on the main deck abaft the superstructure and a pad abaft the hangar; with only an aft pad. In contrast, CTOL, STOL and STOVL vessels are all large and, effectively, all carriers; this because all built or proposed have at least one of the following: a fore and aft flight deck with a superstructure beside it and therefore a wide beam; a heavy flight deck on the hangar roof and therefore a hangar of a construction sturdy enough to support it and a large hull to offset the resulting top-heaviness; a hangar enclosed in the hull and therefore a hull of wide beam; a hangar-deck with a take-off runway, that deck therefore being high above the waves; an in-line take-off runway and hangar or in-line take-off runway and superstructure and therefore a long hull; complex and/or heavy machinery like catapults, arresters and, especially, lifts. Being large and expensive, these ships have to justify their purchase by having one or more of the following that make them even larger and/or more expensive: permanent air groups as large as the ships can carry and which, because the ships are large, are quite large; full and comprehensive servicing and maintenance facilities; large fuel and weapons storage capacity; an all-weather capability and therefore a high-profile but still stable and thus large hull. This overall expense means a number of other-role ships are not built. Carriers justify their expense and this forgoing of other ships with their air groups' potency; their expense, the forgoing of other ships and this potency in turn means carriers are both unriskable and a prime target to an enemy and therefore they are either or both: armed and/or armoured and therefore even larger and more costly; provided permanently with heavily-armed escorts--making them more attractive as targets as elimination of a carrier leaves its escorts without air cover. Carriers being unriskable, such weapons, whether fitted to carriers or to escorts, are largely restricted to defense as carriers must stay as far as possible from an enemy; their air groups effectively being the sole offensive weapon. All this in effect means carriers are single-role vessels: even if as heavily armed as a cruiser, they will not undertake tasks a more expendable cruiser can undertake. A balanced carrier navy, unless it is certain it will only go to war accompanied by allies, will have at least two of these expensive ships, their expensive air groups, their escorts, and other ships for independent operations. Such a navy with CTOL carriers can overwhelm any non-carrier navy and most land-based air forces. STOL or STOVL carrier navies are superior to navies not so equipped. These are the advantages of carriers; the disadvantage is expense, an expense that cannot be reduced because vessels with a runway above a hangar or a runway before a hangar, as noted, must be large. STOL and STOVL carriers have another disadvantage: because they are small, their air groups are too small to ensure protection against land-based CTOL aircraft. Few nations can afford the balanced two-carrier navies described so most rely on fighting ship navies comprising destroyers, frigates, light frigates, corvettes and/or fast attack craft and any requisite support and assault ships. Unlike a carrier navy, such navies have no minimum size or expense. The larger ones comprise destroyers, frigates, assault and support ships, these today generally being (helicopter-deploying) VTOL vessels with a hangar and pad on the main desk as described above. The combination can be fitted to them because it is compact and unintrusive: the pad is small: the size of the air group determines the hangar's size and air groups being small, so is the hangar; the hangar supports no flight deck on its roof so the hangar is of light construction; the hangar roof, the decks below, most of the main deck and most of the air space around the ship are not intruded upon by aircraft facilities or operations so the equipment for the ships' other roles is easily fitted. Among these ships' advantages are: there is no minimum size for their air groups, indeed air groups can even be not deployed as ships with the hangar and pad are hardly more costly than ones without them; the VTOL capability need not be an all-weather or full-maintenance one so savings in vessel size and equipment are possible; fleets of VTOL destroyers and frigates can be dispersed or concentrated at will, when dispersed each vessel has its own air group, when concentrated the force has no prime target at its core and its VTOL capability is not eliminated till the last ship is sunk; no ship is unriskable and so they can be deployed forward where all their weapons can be used. The deficiency of such navies is their lack of fixed-wing aircraft. V/STOL-as-VTOL aircraft can be deployed on larger VTOL ships but the aircraft's limited range means they are not sufficiently superior to ship-launched missiles to persuade many navies to purchase them.